Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Nobody Needs Grazing Reserves Now

By Rotimi Fasan

There was in this
past weekend at least one reported incident of a ghastly nature between Fulani
herdsmen and hunters. This happened in Koh village inAdamawaState. Five
lives including that of one hunter and five herdsmen were lost in that
encounter. This would be the latest in a long series of bloody encounters
between cattle herders who have since replaced their prodding staff and
concealed daggers with the more modern and effective assault rifle.

While clashes
between farmers and herdsmen have a long history in different parts of the
north, there has been an exponential increase in such clashes in different
parts of the country, mostly outside the north, in the last one and half years.
As always in these recent cases the herdsmen have been the main aggressors for
the simple reason that they’ve been responsible for leading their animals into
other peoples’ properties, practically turning such persons’ means of livelihood
into grazing fields. But like the herdsmen, farmers are in their line of
business to make money. Beyond leading their cattle into farmlands herdsmen or
people who pretend to tend cattle have been known to engage in wanton acts of
criminality.

They are involved in
armed robbery, raping and abduction of women and children in isolated
communities. But the one aspect of the activities of these herdsmen that have
been most controversial is their readiness to place their rights as diary
farmers over and above the rights of food and cash crop farmers. For them,
their activities seem to say, their cattle is worth more than human life to say
nothing of anybody’s farm. They would kill at the least provocation just in
order to assert their right to graze their cattle. And with assault rifles now
part of their paraphernalia of business, their criminal tendencies go unchecked.

They’ve decimated
families and sacked villages from places as far-flung apart asBenueand
Adamawa to Ekiti. From Oyo, Plateau,Enuguto Ebonyi, it’s been a harvest of
deaths and destruction. Yet, the response from the authorities has been one of
accommodation if not outright appeasement. Rather than taking a firm hold of
the issue and tackling it headlong, state and federal authorities have tended
to be weak-kneed in terms of what they ought to do. But this ought not to be
so. The number of lives that have been lost to clashes between herdsmen and
farmers or members of other communities ought to make our civil authorities
ashamed. They’ve practically abdicated their responsibilities as Nigerians saw
recently with the Agatu and Nimbo massacres. People are now contemplating self
help in the face of the irresponsible abdication by municipal, state and
federal authorities.

So far the only thing
that the federal authorities have thought fit to do is to propose a so-called
grazing bill that would allow for the establishment of grazing reserves in
different parts of the country. To this end nearly N1 Billion, precisely N940
Million, was set aside in the much-abused 2016 Appropriation Act for the
establishment of grazing reserves in different parts of the country. This
proposal has been opposed by law makers in different parts of the areas
affected by the menace of herdsmen who choose to graze their cattle in
farmlands, destroying economic trees, plants and food crops in the process.
From the look of things the grazing reserve plan is a non-starter. It is an act
of appeasement that is bound to fail as it provides only short-term solution to
a perennial problem. In execution the plan to establish grazing reserves would
be no more than a land grabbing activity.

For how else can
other people be expected to give up their land by executive fiat in order to
provide grazing land for herdsmen? Are we being told that cattle grazing, an
economic activity, is intrinsically more important than farming, another type
of economic activity? This is an invidious act that is not likely to make for
peaceful co-existence. Nigerians should all be guided by a common morality that
is enshrined in our constitution. To create different moralities for different
reasons for the same people is to prepare an unworkable brew. Our law makers
and political leaders realise this. Which is why they’ve been mealy-mouthed
about the proposed grazing bill which we hear has passed its second reading at
the National Assembly even when law makers continue to deny its existence. Why
is it difficult to address this matter squarely? Is this unconnected to the
fundamental injustice that resides at the foundation of the plan to establish
grazing reserves that are euphemistically called grazing routes?

Which farmer would
allow such routes through their farms? And which community would want an
outpost of adversaries created in their backyard in the name of grazing
reserves? The issue here is not about the ethnicity of the Fulani herdsmen as
it is about the propriety of promoting the right of some Nigerians over and
above that of others. More importantly the grazing reserve proposal is a blind
and heedless rejection of modernity by a people and a government that is locked
in a time warp. Ultimately, it amounts to a failure of leadership because where
people fail or refuse to recognise what is in their interest, it is the
responsibility of their leaders to show them the light. While not all changes
are desirable, some changes are simply inevitable. Herdsmen cannot insist on
the right to graze their cattle from one end of the country to another in the
mistaken notion that it has been their way of life since-God-knows-when,
where there are more convenient, economical and rewarding modes of diary
farming. What are ranches for?

This would not make
sense to a people who turned their foremost ranch, the Obudu Cattle Ranch, into
a mere holiday resort. Why should we all wait on the Fulani for cattle anyway?
In centuries of grazing their cattle have our herdsmen produced more cattle
than others who subscribe to ranching in different parts of the world? Why must
the Nigerian government always bend over backwards to hold back the overall
development of the country just simply because some people choose not to
modernise? In the 1980s, Jubril Aminu, asNigeria’s
Minister of Education, wasted so much time and resources on a so-called nomadic
education plan to take care of cattle Fulani. This rather than educate the
herdsmen on the need to adapt to a modern mode of stable existence. If we had
tried to train the herdsmen on the virtue of allowing their children to attend
conventional schools, we would probably not have to be appeasing them while
inconveniencing others today with plans to establish grazing reserves. A time
comes when the right thing must be done. On the question of animal husbandry
that time is now.